Money goes fast when you are traveling…so we had to figure out a way to make money on the road. I do voice work and have a steady client so I had some money coming in from that. Rob codes websites and does graphic design work, so when we could find a place we would be doing our work. I think the most beautiful place Rob did coding was on the beach in Tulum. We were camping on the beach and in the morning we walked down the beach until we could find a place for him to sit at a table. We found a fancy resort type place and sat down, but they wanted to charge us for using the table, so we said…are there any free tables? and the man said, yes that one over there without an umbrella. So we sat all day and Rob worked away.

In those days we lived job to job, so the graphic design job he did got us to our next location. Then I would do a voice job and that would get us a little further…I suggested that we get a machete because there were days when we were really low on food and if we had a machete we could cut down coconuts, which we could quite easily live off of for a while if we needed to. (That machete became Rob’s very favorite thing in the whole world, besides his family and me.)

We tried to make it on our own, but there were times we got into trouble, and our families sent us money so we could get to our next location…our intention was always that we were going to make enough money to pay everyone back, but as it went, it was hard to have enough time to work and travel. Traveling all the time takes it out of you sometimes and there are not always perfect situations in which to work when you are on crowded buses or finding the next place to stay…

After Tulum we were at a bus stop and we met this man Jerry. Jerry was quite a character. He was vivacious and full of life. (and rum) We told him we were going to go to Synthesis, but couldn’t get on the list and he said, “I am not on the list, I am just going to show up!” So Rob and I looked at each other and said “Ok, we’re in!”